Not 33
by x-menobsessed26
Summary: Jean reflects on how age and relationships correlate. one-shot


He's younger. Much younger. Nine years younger.

The thought both terrifies me and excites me at the same time, but mostly it just makes me incredibly annoyed.

If you were to add forty or thirty, or maybe even twenty or ten years, onto our ages, the difference wouldn't matter quite as much. Now, however, it's gigantic.

The rest of the world would see a relationship between us as outrageous enough with the number of years between us. Then the added factor of me being the older of the two of us and me being a woman add a whole other level of strange. This is the part that kind of ticks me off.

I have always hated that stereotype. Hell, I was raised in a family against the stereotype. My mom is five years older than my dad. Grandma Grey was eight years older than Grandpa. I have a cousin Danielle who is ten years older than her husband, and my sister, Sara, is six years older than Paul. Paul is my age for God's sake.

The only problem is that Sara and Paul didn't start dating until a year and a half ago and just got married three weeks ago. That means they are 33 and 27 years old. Now I'm going to apply a bit of common sense to this.

If Paul is the youngest of the pairing, that would make him the 27-year-old. If I am the same age as Paul, I'm 27. Subtracting the nine years that separate me from the man I'm in love with, that means he's 18.

He's barely fucking legal.

Unfortunately, that makes a huge difference in the romantic perceptions people and the media have deluded themselves into. Each one of the couples I've mentioned are happier than I could ever dream of being.

So when most people I meet find it a horrid, wrong, or scandalous idea that I love him, I tend to get a bit upset.

It's not as if I don't understand where these perceptions come from. Of course it used to be traditional that older men with semi-steady jobs would create an arranged marriage of sorts with young women. Also, I strongly believe it has to do with these insane ideas beaten into the heads of young boys that they will need to "take care of" their women some day, so when applying some logic to that argument, they would obviously want to meet that standard and choose someone they can take care of.

A non-independent, barely legal, young woman.

Not me.

That is about as far away from the description of me as you can get without changing my gender. I'm very independent, unless I can't be in a certain situation, and I'm certainly not barely legal. I think at 25 I finished my young woman status, so I'm definitely not someone to "be taken care of".

However, it's not just his age that is keeping him from me, though that is certainly a large part of it. The fact that he is a student of mine doesn't really shoot the arrow in my favor. The last thing in the world anyone needs is for Bobby Drake's moral and academic integrity to be questioned when it has just been released that the Xavier Institute is a mutant academy.

That's right. It's Bobby Drake who I'm wooing over.

I could say a million cheesy things about him, but I won't. That's not the point of my current inner monologuing. Besides, if you want that, I'll just pick you up one of the hundreds of stupid romance novels myself, Ororo, and a lot of the girls here like to indulge in. Even a few of the boys enjoy it, though for the sake of their social appearance they can never admit it. Stupid damn societal expectations.

But, I digress. My social life in and of itself is rather bland, due to my large distaste for people and the condition of my mutation. That mental standpoint doesn't make for very interesting dates, especially now that I'm passing my prime.

It's getting harder and harder to find someone willing to date a cynical doctor who is a known pro-mutant political speaker and works at a local and recently outed mutant academy. When it's unleashed that I myself am not just a mutant, but a mutant who can read your mind while throwing you across the wall with my mind, I'm lucky if I can even see them running to the door with the speeds they go.

So, instead of stocking the shelves with the newly arrived medical equipment or helping some students study, I'm taking a moment to lock myself into my lab so I can cry over how I can never be with the man I want. Well, at least for a few years.

That sickening, golden taste of hope crawls up the back of my throat. Maybe, just maybe, there's a chance for me.

After all, I'm not 33 yet.

**A short ranting fic that popped into my head during my Social Problems class.**


End file.
